


view from the low-rise

by bookhousegirl



Category: The Wire
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, M/M, Missing Scenes, Non-Linear Narrative, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 03:09:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9949715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhousegirl/pseuds/bookhousegirl
Summary: On the Greyhound from the bay side to the west side, Wallace reflects on what matters.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve missed writing about The Wire so much and just completed my rewatch of Season 1, so I wanted to give Wallace and his heartbreaking found family a try. This is pre-slash, or light pining about Wallace and Bodie at best. This fic also stops just short of the [major spoiler] between them, thus is still in canon. Heartbreak for sure. 
> 
> Thanks for reading (I hope to do some more Michael and Dukie soon).

 

***

 

A cacophony of chirping, those motherfucking crickets, meet his ears the second he slides open the window, and breaks the artificial stop-and-start rumbling of the AC. Wallace tosses his Jansport and then rolls out himself. The metal frame piece that holds the screen in place feels sharp against his ribs, digging in against soft flesh through his t-shirt. He has to run almost three miles to the bus station in Cambridge and these Timbs are probably not the most optimal for that. Still, it was a triumph even to get grandma to buy them, convincing her he was no country-ass boy, even if they wanted him to play that part for now. And they had to go all the way to Queenstown, to the outlets, for fuck’s sake, Wallace helpless the whole time against the desire to jump out of the car and start sprinting for the bridge towards Annapolis.

 

At the bus station, really just a curbside pickup, he slaps down the eighteen dollars that came from Poot, in a stained envelope with _Cambridge_ misspelled, and goes to sit in the back of the bus. It doesn’t leave for another twenty minutes, and then it’s almost two hours til it makes the downtown bus terminal on West Fayette. He presses his cheek against sidewall, covered in scratchy gray material that reminds him of the industrial carpeting of a school, when he went to school anyway, and lets his eyes slip closed.

 

Two hours to home.

 

***

 

From the moment Daniels drops him, in the middle of the night, life down the shore is surreal.

 

“I can’t say what’s going on, not totally, not yet,” Wallace hears Daniels tell his grandma, over a slice of lemon ice box pie and a cup of weak coffee. He hovers by the door of his room, keeping it cracked open just enough. His fingers fidget and skitter along the heavy wood, and he mutters a curse when he snags his skin. He sucks lightly at the pad of his thumb while Daniels lays out the future. Maybe they can work with the feds, get him to the deep south, maybe the west. But for now, until there’s a court date, Wallace stays by the bay.

 

The bed he sleeps in that night isn’t a dirty twin mattress that produces a cloud of dust every time he changes position. It’s up off the ground and has actual white sheets and a quilt with rabbits on it, that are heavy over his body, and make him feel lifeless and trapped. The only rabbit he ever saw in the city was in a wire hutch behind one of the vacants, curled up amongst the sawdust shavings and its own shit, its fur dried but still so startlingly soft when he touched it.

 

“It’s sick,” Cyril had said, helping some random terrace boy put water drops onto a broken dish. “It’s probably dying.”

 

“Same shit,” Wallace sighed before he headed back to the corner.

 

In the dark and quiet, the only sound the nocturnal symphony of insects and the play by play voices mixed with static of the Orioles game on the FM, he makes a note to ask, when he gets the chance, if someone is handing out the snacks, getting Cyril and the other rugrats to brush their teeth before school. Bodie is probably stepping up. That’s just like Bodie.

 

***

 

Everything is so clean. Not only does he get his own room, that has a painting of a sailboat above his bed, and a worn-out wicker chair next to a bookshelf, but his own bathroom too, just off the hall, with a light so white and painful he can see where his teeth have yellowed while looking in the mirror. He thumbs through one of the books, a practically brand new John Grisham, while he takes a shit with the door fucking closed.

 

During the day he wanders around the rooms of the house, touching the slim silver antennae of the TV and the faded black and yellow keys on the upright piano in the corner. He wonders if Poot and Bodie would laugh over Everybody Loves Raymond the way his grandma does, amused and fake, like she’s still thinking _motherfuckin white people_ through her smiles _,_ because damn, she should.

 

He finds a rubik’s cube and a lego set in a cardboard box, all the way at the back of his closet, and wonders if they were supposed to be for him, from a long time ago, before his mother lost him and never bothered to find him, never bothered to look. Before he made himself another family. He drops the rubik’s cube into his backpack with the half-hearted thought that he’ll give it to one of the kids or maybe D’Angelo, when he gets back. He’ll do it when Bodie’s not around; he’s not getting made fun of, or a bottle thrown at his fucking head again.

 

“You know a black man made the McNugget,” he says at dinner, trying to remember to use his fork and knife to cut up the chicken tenders like they’re some kind of special meal and not out of a box from Mickey D’s. He looks up to catch his grandma’s eye. It’s uncomfortable, to look at her, and be seen. But he’s trying there too.

 

She smiles. “Is that so?”

 

“Well yeah. Do ya think that the white men who own the McDonald’s is gonna let a black man take credit and make all the money for that?” He dredges the chicken through some barbecue sauce and pops it in his mouth. “Besides, there ain’t no white man who can make a piece of chicken taste like that,” Wallace says, and that makes her laugh.

 

There’s not much more to do than any of that, so he goes out to the payphone, he spied it, lit up like a beacon, the night Daniels drove him down, because even a hundred miles out of the city, he’s no country mouse. Wallace knows the number for the Pit like he was some suburbs kid from the county, memorizing his home phone on the first day of school to tell the teachers. The lady on the other end tells him to deposit more money and feeds quarters, enough to get at least five minutes of something real and familiar.

 

Poot talks about wanting to come visit, about seeing shorties in bikinis at the beach, because of course he does. There’s a random car coming slowly up the road, the smell of tailpipe exhaust and hot macadam under the tires, and Wallace has to hang up. He doesn’t get a chance to ask about the kids, who’s helping with the homework. He doesn’t get a chance to ask about Bodie.

 

On Sundays there is church, and they’re there with a bunch of black and white people together, with friendly, painted-on smiles and low, murmured good tidings that make his scalp itch. His suit feels all wrong, he doesn’t look money, like Stringer. It’s boxy and cut badly and too big. A terrible costume for his made-up role. He should be standing in front of a projected map of the country with a laser pointer, like Norm Lewis, talking about warm air moving north and the threat of precipitation low in the clouds, tornadoes in Kansas, wildfires in California. All the foreign places he could possibly go. It’s just as laughable a thought as sitting here, his ass parked on a pew, when saying _thy will be done,_ and not having it refer to Avon Barksdale is as unlikely as talking about a late-moving storm over the bay.

 

***

 

When D’Angelo passes him blood money, for his efforts with Omar’s boy, he slides the bundle into the wide pocket of his faded jeans and shrugs, embarrassed, as D’Angelo suggests he spend it on a girl or get one fast.

 

“What you looking so confused about,” Bodie chirps from around the corner.

 

“Nah, man, nothing,” he says back. Something’s not sitting right, and he touches his stomach. Maybe those crab chips are past their expiration date, he should check. Can’t have a house full of kids being sick.

 

Bodie jogs up beside him, a sheen of sweat forming on his bare neck. “Where you going?”

 

Wallace frowns. “Maybe to get some food. You want?”

 

“I’ll take a chicken ranch, some salt n vinegar chips if they got it.” Bodie raises an eyebrow in surprise when Wallace doesn’t hold his palm out for cash. “You buying?”

 

The money’s there, the twenties rolled up in the tell-tale wad, stiff against his fingers. There’s no way to make this good or make it right or make it _not this_. “For you, yeah I guess.” He reaches out and bumps his knuckles against Bodie’s bare arm, where the cut off sleeves of his white t-shirt expose the muscle of Bodie’s bicep. “Don’t tell Poot.”

 

“Rich ass motherfucker,” Bodie grins, and Wallace turns to go. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

 

***

 

They began in the low-rises, as afterthoughts of babies who never should’ve been having babies, just them three, trying to make it til sixteen and escape the watchful eye of CPS. They stuffed themselves in the overcrowded rowhomes side by side, as kids who monitored the stash, acted as lookout on the streets, and watched each other grow up. Wallace, Poot, and Bodie, just them three, for forever.

 

“Like this,” Bodie had taught him, ages ago,  and he cupped his hand around Wallace’s and looked away.

 

When Wallace unfolded his fingers, there was a smooth black pebble, not a yellow top, and he smiled and handed it back to Bodie.

 

“Ugh, no,” Bodie hissed. “You do it. Like I showed you, asshole.” And he held his hand out, like a soft, tan vessel, waiting for Wallace to fill it. Even back then, Wallace clasped on, and flushed a little when Bodie praised, “Yeah, that’s right. Keep it tight, Wallace.”

 

It wasn’t like being friends, or neighbors, or part of D’Angelo’s crew. They were family, in the way that you could do everything that mattered together, like shout five-oh on the street and laugh around the pit on a velour orange couch, or huddle, scared shitless that your brains were about to get blown out by a sawed-off shotgun, hands locked together behind your head so tight your bones might crumble. It’s the way you can forgive something like a bottle hurtling towards your face, just for feeling tender about a tiger toy that could twist, and spin, to transform its shape and never break.

 

Bodie bitches now about the late re-ups and the weak product and walks around half-cocked, as if he’s some big timer in the game. But Wallace knows how after his forehead bled, and they were back inside, away from D’Angelo and the constant movement and chaos of the courtyard, Bodie held some ice, wrapped in a paper towel, to his blood-dry skin. “There,” he had said to Wallace, with an air of finality. “And don’t forget to rub some neosporin or shit on it, so it don’t scar.”

 

It wasn’t an apology, not an approximation, not anywhere fucking close. But Wallace sat on his mattress, paper towel pressed tight til it was just lukewarm and watery, and it was like they were kids, passing a pebble back and forth, learning the perfect handoff by sense memory, by the touch of each other’s skin.

 

They take care of each other, a truth that existed way before D’Angelo ever stepped foot into their hood, and will exist long after. Things might be twisted, and spun, and transformed now, sure. But that truth won’t break. Wallace is damn sure.

 

***

 

One day in October it had got fucking cold, like way below freezing for Baltimore at that time of year, and like the busts by narcos and stash cleanouts of Omar, they were caught unprepared. Wallace had gone round, collecting the blankets and pushing the little ones into one room where they could sleep close together, their breath making puffs in the air.

 

“What are you doing?” he asked into the darkness, bleary with sleep, with crust in the corner of his eyes where the involuntary tears from the cold had set. Bodie’s there, his hoodie pulled up, some kind of dark scarf wrapped around his head and face.

 

“I’m cold.”

 

“So’m I. So what. I’m trying to sleep through it.”

 

“ _Wallace_.” Bodie kicks off his shoes and flops onto the tiny mattress next to him. “You’ve got the biggest blanket. And I’m cold, so stop being a bitch and share.”

 

It’s dark but through the flecks of streetlight from the courtyard, Wallace sees Bodie’s eyes, big and serious. He’s not the guy who screams about getting ripped off by junkies or makes fun of people who just want to escape to a childhood they never had, he’s Wallace’s friend, trustworthy, and solid, and real. Wallace makes room and watches Bodie’s face as he flips the blanket across them both.

 

“Can you stop being mad at me now?” he asks.

 

“I’m not mad.”

 

“You act it. All the time.”

 

Bodie props himself up on a elbow. “It’s changing, Wallace. We can’t be dumb about shit anymore. It’s not gonna be busting out of juvie, it’s gonna be doing time in Jessup one day. That’s all I want. Us not to be dumb about shit. We’re not boys anymore. We gotta be men.”

 

“I won’t be dumb about shit. I swear,” Wallace whispers and drops his head back to the pillow. He feels Bodie’s cold nose nudge hard against his ear.

 

“You better not,” Bodie breathes, forceful and ragged in a way that makes Wallace ache with sadness and longing. He suddenly wants to be a kid again, on the edge of something that wasn’t even carefree or happy or pure, but something _not this_.

 

***

 

He ambles off the bus, stretching his legs, which have been locked tight against the hard plastic seat in front of him for the last two hours. It’s not exactly a homecoming at the Pit, but that’s what it is. Coming home. This is him, baking in the city humidity and skulking in the shadows in his t-shirt and Timbs, not some dressed up boy on the eastern shore, made falsely clean by a hot meal and a sermon.

 

Things don’t feel right, but he made that promise, whispered in the dark, with Bodie so close beside him, to not be dumb about shit that could hurt them, to not be a kid, even though he wants to.

 

So when Bodie looks at him from across the table, their food untouched and growing cold, and asks if he’s a man, he says yes.


End file.
